It is High Time for Oil & Gas Companies to Delve into the World of MOOCs

Abstract

This paper aims at exposing oil and gas companies, contractors and service providers, to inspire and urge them to delve into the exciting and exponentially expanding world of MOOCs -Massively Open Online Courses. They have immense potential of vastly improving the process of workforce learning and knowledge growth. The benefits of the MOOCs are simply too great to ignore and continue to tread on the traditional training path only. Already several corporates have made a paradigm shift and redefined their training models.The paper presents the platforms, tools and opportunities available in both technical and non-technical fields, and how one can access these digital education processes from some of the world's best universities, professional forums and institutions, available often free of cost on the World Wide Web. This is the age of digital information, actively pursued by the current generation aptly named as Љdigital nativesЉ. The humankind has gone through several revolutions through the centuries and currently is undergoing through a very large, powerful and rapidly evolving e-learning transformation all over the world on the virtual platforms. Therefore, it is essential that everyone is made aware, understand and be part of these sweeping transformations in these learning mechanisms.MOOCs will empower the large community of oil and gas professionals to various self-learning technical, managerial, HSSE and personality development courses, while providing them accessibility sitting in their cozy confines of home. The Authors through this paper would like to bring and share their MOOCs experience to the SPE community. The paper discusses the essential attributes of the learning processes, and analyses both the traditional classroom based learning and MOOCs based learning opportunities. The focus is from a point of an engineer working in the oil and gas industry. However, the mechanisms and the approach methodology is beneficial for all the professionals, technical staff, managerial and administration personnel in the oil and gas industry as well outside it.The paper lists MOOCs providers, websites and resources under different categories such as universities based open source learning, institutional agencies, technical forums, libraries, general learning etc. where one can benefit from the tools such as MOOCs, video lectures, notes, books, standards, and technical spreadsheet based calculations etc.MOOCs have come into prominence very recently in the late 2012. Within these three years, they have caught the imagination of people, universities and the corporates alike defying the boundaries of nations, class, and abilities. It is no longer a fad but well established new trend of training and learning -anyone, anything, anytime, any rate, anywhere at no or insignificant cost. The authors are confident the resources and the information provided through this presentation will enlighten the oil and gas professionals with this new training trend.